Rod Schrock, the chief executive of net portal AltaVista, has resigned, just months before the company's target date for an initial public offering.

The company says that a search for a successor is already underway, and while an IPO was still a "primary goal", it would wait until a new boss was in place.

Schrock's departure comes during a bad year for the company, following the failure to launch an unlimited access internet service in the UK and having to lay off a quarter of its staff. AltaVista postponed its IPO in the spring due to weak market conditions, and has since admitted it does not have the clout to take on top media companies like Yahoo Inc.

However, Schrock said he had actually stayed in his post longer than originally planned in order to see AltaVista through some transitions.

"For four years, I've had the goal to take a break by the Summer Olympics 2000," he said. He said he was disappointed that company obligations caused him to stay on a little longer, but was now planning on spending time with his family.

The company has become a leading net destination, and has grown from 55 employees a year ago to 675 today.

Schrock joined AltaVista last January, as the company was being expanded from a noncommercial search service to a major Internet portal. He added that for all its achievements, AltaVista had been "blessed with a sense of incredibly poor timing".

Aside from its main US site, AltaVista has seven country-specific search engines in Europe as well as an Indian site. An Australian site launched this month, and the company has plans for 35 more country-specific sites in the next year. The company claim over half of their 65 million monthly users are from outside North America.